Definition of "notional" []

• Of, containing, or being a notion; mental or imaginary. (adjective)
• Speculative or theoretical. (adjective)
• Linguistics Conveying an idea of a thing or of an action; having full lexical meaning as distinguished from relational meaning. The word did is notional in We did the work and relational in We did not agree. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Alongside the regular steps to the building's 59th Street entrance, Mr. Abadan has created what he calls "notional" steps, too far apart to be comfortably ascended, but well-suited for seating."
• "Problems with "notional" - becomes difficult to extract wisdom - we want a "Gross Domestic Product" - unable to be defended - pseudo-scientific - lots of belief statements from Mark Curphey's SecurityBullshit"
• "But, I thought you couldn’t call it ‘receivership’ either, because those all trillions and trillions of imaginary dollars in notional value Credit Default Swaps have to pay out for banks that go into ‘recievership’ and to have those unexploded CDS liabilities go from imaginary to real would be the world financial system equivalent of Global Thermonuclear War."